Facsimile transmissions ("faxes") have revolutionized business and personal correspondence. Most businesses and many homes have facsimile machines.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,293,253 to Kida et al., "Kida" herein, discusses ways of preventing unwanted facsimile reception. In part, Kida addresses the issue of "junk faxes", which are unsolicited faxes sent by advertisers to recipients who may prefer not to receive them.
The background section of Kida discusses prior art that accepts facsimile transmission only from certain telephone numbers and for certain terminal identifier codes. In other words, a list is maintained of "acceptable" senders, identified by telephone number and/or terminal identifier. Kida is a variation of that idea. In Kida, the telephone number or terminal identifier of stations to whom faxes are sent are captured. These captured numbers or identifiers are automatically entered on the "acceptable" list. In other words, Kida maintains a list of senders from whom facsimile transmission will be accepted; in particular, faxes are accepted from those to whom faxes are sent.
Kida addresses some problems that facsimile users face. However, users face a host of other problems. Kida addresses blocking the receipt of facsimile transmissions except from known sources. However, a user may wish to accept faxes from unknown sources, as for example, a merchant who receives orders from new customers. At the same time, the user may wish to block faxes from other sources. Or, for example, a user may not know whether a facsimile reception from an unknown source is welcome or unwelcome. Kida is of no assistance with these problems. Furthermore, Kida concerns only preventing the reception of unwanted faxes. Kida nowhere touches upon problems that can arise from unwanted or unintended fax transmission.
Problems with such fax transmission can be serious. Users rely on facsimile transmission for delivering almost any document that can be mailed or hand-delivered. Faxes are acceptable even for court filings. Many businesses routinely rely on faxes for almost all of their correspondence.
Unfortunately, faxes can be misdelivered. The mere fact that a transmission is completed provides no insurance that it has been transmitted to the intended recipient. Confirmation notices are commonly printed upon successful transmission of a fax. The confirmation notice typically indicates the station identifier, the number of pages transmitted, the time of transmission, and whether the transmission was successful. Receipt of a confirmation notice provides further assurance and proof that the transmission occurred in the intended or claimed manner.
However, a confirmation notice is typically printed after transmission. In case of error, it notifies the sender that an error has been made, but only after the fact. Where confidential or sensitive information has been transmitted, after-the-fact knowledge may be too late. In many situations, a user may routinely send facsimile transmissions to a particular telephone number and yet have other transmissions that would be disastrous if sent to those same numbers. For example, a law firm may routinely send faxes to its opposing counsel. Damaging material can be inadvertently faxed to opposing counsel because staff, accustomed to dialing (or auto-dialing) certain numbers, inadvertently perseverates. Similarly, damaging material can inadvertently be faxed to counterparts in a negotiation or other business dealing. Group distribution lists are often programmed into facsimile machines, increasing the chances that one group distribution list might inadvertently be substituted for another.
What is needed is a system that safeguards against facsimile transmission to unintended recipients; that allows a recipient to selectively block transmissions from certain senders; and that aids a recipient in determining whether or not he wishes a facsimile transmission.